ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign

[watzizname]

Originally Posted by Chris

VM, on the other hand, are selling you a service that is capable of going exactly as fast as it says it can, limited only by the congestion you may experience at any given time of day ... much as a motorway may at times get so busy that the effect is to limit the speed you can go.

Agreed, in theory it's capable of doing just that, in reality it's only allowed for 10 hrs a day, and is heavily reliant on not living in an oversubscribed area to do so.

What with STM, application throttling, and threats to cut you off if you hit an (as yet) undefined limit during peak hours, Virgin Media is in danger of loosing the ground it once held without any effort, to the very companies it keeps slinging mud at.

I guess what I'm saying is, that I would like to drive VM's Ferrari like connection with petrol in the tank, and air in the tyres for more than just 10 hrs a day, and also not be expected to do so when I should be in bed fast asleep

[muppetman11]

Originally Posted by watzizname

Agreed, in theory it's capable of doing just that, in reality it's only allowed for 10 hrs a day, and is heavily reliant on not living in an oversubscribed area to do so.

What with STM, application throttling, and threats to cut you off if you hit an (as yet) undefined limit during peak hours, Virgin Media is in danger of loosing the ground it once held without any effort, to the very companies it keeps slinging mud at.

I guess what I'm saying is, that I would like to drive VM's Ferrari like connection with petrol in the tank, and air in the tyres for more than just 10 hrs a day, and also not be expected to do so when I should be in bed fast asleep

The 10mb service has a 1500mb download limit between 4-9pm meaning if you streamed a movie in HD at 4pm by 6pm you would be throttled right down to 2.5mb.

And if it's ok I'll stick to my Fiat 500

[dave6x]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

And https://shop.virginmedia.com/broadba...d-matters.html

And the problem with averages is ... that they are averages!

Several years ago I got fed up with the ATM at my local bank being out of order when I visited it. I went into the bank and asked to see the manager, his response to my complaint was that the average availability of their ATMs was 98%. My reply to this was that although an ATM may be available at 3am it is no good to me if it is unavailable at 3pm!

And by the same reasoning if I wish to use the full capacity of my broadband service at 5pm and it is only delivering download speeds of 2Mb/s and e.g. can't deliver a YouTube video without stalling, something which my neighbour next door can achieve on BT "up to 8Mb", I don't wish to be told that I can do it at 5am when magically my broadband will deliver 10Mb/s and YouTube streams faultlessly!!!!!!!

[SMG]

Conning people is pretty common nowerdays, companies suck you in with false & misleading promises, then screw you with price increases whilst your tied into a 12 month contrick, (Sorry, contract!)

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by denphone

And here is the latest example of Virgin's superiority.


https://shop.virginmedia.com/broadba...explained.html

If Virgin are so superior perhaps they would be good enough to remove the traffic shaping and throttling from their network, as surely being so superior they cope without it?

Failing that if they are assured of their superiority why don't they have a rate guarantee as another cable company do?

What is Com Hem Rate Guarantee?
In Com Hem, you always get the broadband speed you pay for.

To ensure that you, the Com Hem customer really know what speed you would expect, we have introduced a clearer labeling. The label shows the minimum and maximum speed for each broadband when you have a wired connection between your modem and computer. Test us on the independent site Bredbandskollen.se. If we do not live up to our promise, you only have to pay for the lower speed instead. We call it Speed ​​Warranty.

No 'up to', a maximum and a minimum.

I do hope you're getting paid for spreading the good word on here.

---------- Post added at 21:40 ---------- Previous post was at 21:40 ----------

Originally Posted by SMG

Conning people is pretty common nowerdays, companies suck you in with false & misleading promises, then screw you with price increases whilst your tied into a 12 month contrick, (Sorry, contract!)

Yup this is what they all do.

---------- Post added at 21:42 ---------- Previous post was at 21:40 ----------

Originally Posted by Chris

More:
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...ned-by-the-asa
and
http://www.asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adj...ADJ_50892.aspx

Discuss.

Bit optimistic hoping people will actually read the adjudication. The usual suspects with tongues in Virgin Media's orifices will say it's all grossly unfair, the usual people who loathe the company will say that it's great and proves their point that they murder babies.

The adjudication itself is perfectly sensible on all points. Whatever the fundamental message and its validity it was lost in hyperbole and mud slinging.

That's the problem with negative advertising - sooner or later it will come back and bite you in the ass.....

Naughty VM.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Hugh

That's the problem with negative advertising - sooner or later it will come back and bite you in the ass.....

Naughty VM.

Absolutely.

Dragging others through the mud for "Up to" advertising when most of the "Up to" is out of their control, and when your own service is just as much clearly "Up to" (and all the speed drops are entirely within your control) is just plain hypocrisy.

[Tod]

Originally Posted by adzii_nufc

The thing is with the people that don't get the advertised speeds is it all works off percentages.

For example if they stated 80% of 50mb subscribers hit the advertised speeds I'd find that acceptable knowing that we are miles away from problem-free broadband.

Then sky release figures of a mere 20% of customers get the advertised speeds which is unacceptable

The above are examples and in no way represent Virgin or Sky



He does not need proof as no broadband is fail-proof and there will always be complaints but I agree with what you are saying by delivering your evidence of Virgin's multiple awards and fewer complaints than other ISP's

The other 20% of Virgin customers are probably not using any anti-virus software and or using an old 486!

I have never found the speed test to give me less than 29MB on my 30MB connection.

[tweetiepooh]

I don't have an issue with an "upto" as sometimes speed is out of control of the provider. Where it's not acceptable is to simply use "upto" as a means to sell a service that will never be able to provide that speed.

[devilincarnate]

Originally Posted by tweetiepooh

I don't have an issue with an "upto" as sometimes speed is out of control of the provider. Where it's not acceptable is to simply use "upto" as a means to sell a service that will never be able to provide that speed.

Very true My car can go up to 118MPH but I'am only allowed to do a maximum of 70MPH on the motorway

[muppetman11]

http://www.broadbandreports.com/show...n-a-Con-115465

[pabscars]

More of a bluff i'd say

[driz]

That article refers to Virgin's HFC as FTTP and fibre?

Virgin referring to their products as 'fibre' is a far greater con. That the ASA didn't stop them calling their product 'fibre optic' originally is disgusting.

[damien c]

Originally Posted by driz

That article refers to Virgin's HFC as FTTP and fibre?

Virgin referring to their products as 'fibre' is a far greater con. That the ASA didn't stop them calling their product 'fibre optic' originally is disgusting.

The thing is right, is Virgin's broadband fibre or not?

Answer yes it is the whole backbone is Fibre.

Could BT and Sky and other companies advertise saying "our fibre optic broadband" simply put yes they could because there backbone is fibre.

Also why shouldn't Virgin be able to stop other companies advertising at those speed's considering probably about 30% if that of there customers, actually get anything above 2mb - 4mb where as I am guessing here at the pecentages but I reckon atleast 80+ of Virgin's customers get there max speed.

Not to mention that Virgin have or are curretly trialing 1.5gb connection's using fibre to the home so, if and when that get's released are you then going to say the same thing.

The funny thing I see is when companies including Virgin advertise "Unlimited Broadband" when they all and we all know it is not truly unlimited because of the traffic shaping.

I don't think any company should be able to advertise super fast broadband unless they are selling 100mb and upwards, simply because I don't consider anything less as superfast.

All the advertising I see from Sky and BT etc is false advertisment when it comes to speed, and from them all when they say unlimited especially when some companies will charge you per gb if you download more than 300gb a month.

[driz]

Originally Posted by damien c

The thing is right, is Virgin's broadband fibre or not?

Answer yes it is the whole backbone is Fibre.

Could BT and Sky and other companies advertise saying "our fibre optic broadband" simply put yes they could because there backbone is fibre.

By this reasoning, back when people were using dialup or ISDN it could have been marketed as 'fibre internet' because the entire backbone at that point was quite likely fibre.

The last mile matters. HFC has different performance characteristics to FTTH. Virgin's last mile is not fibre. They shouldn't be able to call it such.

For what it's worth, I'm also very annoyed by BT's VDSL2 (and resellers) being marketed as fibre. It's also clearly not.

Originally Posted by damien c

Not to mention that Virgin have or are curretly trialing 1.5gb connection's using fibre to the home so, if and when that get's released are you then going to say the same thing.

If/when Virgin start actually running fibre to people's homes then of course I'm not going to say the same thing... because it wouldn't be true? It'd be brilliant if they did this on a broader scale!

Hangon, I just googled this and it's 1.5gb down and 150meg up, which sounds suspiciously like massive amounts of channel bonding on DOCSIS3? Prossibly not fibre.